NaGUST:
The Features EP
Well, well, well… What do we got here? It looks like Moonspeak has come out with a new EP (and yet another one, as of this edit)—ah, yes, but with a twist: she’s no longer fucking with that “Moonspeak” shit these days, folks. Indeed, she’s now going by her brand-spanking new alias, NaGUST—a sort of corruption of the month of August, because of, stated, her general distaste for that month and the atmosphere that it creates for her. This was a move conceived from the notion that, since her very first EP with Atmos, she feels as though she has grown muchly as an artist, and, as a result, feels a sort of disconnect from her earlier music. This is a good sign—it shows confidence, a feel for where you are at in terms of your compositional capabilities, and a sign of general intellectual maturation, because she seems to believe that the releases of her past no longer accurately reflect who she is artistically, so she has chosen to sort of disassociate herself from that era (though not entirely; she does have plans to release a sort of re-mastered “best of” compilation album featuring the best of her Moonspeak-era material). It’s a sapient move, and it’s exciting for listeners such as myself to hear news like this, because it’ll inevitably create more hype for her next release with this new-and-improved, rich, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, crème-de-la-crème… You know. We wanna hear this new recording conceived under this advanced, upgraded mentality. But does that necessarily mean she’ll actually deliver?
Well, in this particular instance, yes. The Features EP is what I feel to be a great, fresh start in NaGUST’s composing “career”, so to speak. It’s easily one of the better recordings she has ever made, let alone one of her best EPs, and it’s quite refreshing to see a sort of clean-cut release with no silly titling gimmicks and no over-long, drawn out tracks for once. With this sort of upgrade, however, I feel it’s necessary to make an upgrade of my own in regard to my whole reviewing process—from now on, I’m all about the music, and just the music. I feel like in the past, I’d harp too much on the aesthetic and other minutiae of each release—with the titles and the track lengths and even the cover art. Paragraphs would be spent deriding these trivialities when I ought to have been focusing more on, if not entirely, the music itself. It’s a matter of courtesy and brevity. I write these reviews to constructively criticize my friend’s hard work, and as such, I’ll make a stronger effort to focus only on the tracks themselves, and how they sound when viewed individually and holistically. A throwaway comment here or there about a particular title that strikes me in particular might still take place if I see fit, but I’ll no longer waste anyone’s time with insubstantial nonsense like that by the paragraph.
We open up uniquely with “GIGIO”; an electronic hip hop beat inspired by the music found on the character select screen of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Dominated by its energetic and perhaps urgent rhythm, the vocals of featured rapper Amvis are almost drowned out, leaving me struggling to hear whatever it is he’s rapping about. He sounds great, though—he has a very strong yet simple flow and every one of his lines is delivered quite powerfully. I just kinda wish I knew what he was spitting, but perhaps the dominating 8-bit influenced beat is supposed to set the tone that this is meant to be a pure music-listening experience—nothing lyrically challenging. That would be consistent with NaGUST’s previous releases, but in general, I feel like the main driving factor of hip-hop music should be the lyricism. Maybe Amvis is drowned out because he’s not actually saying anything profound, which is part of the issue, in my opinion. The lack of a hook doesn’t help, especially considering that the whole purpose of the hook is to “hook” the audience in and get them to sing along, or at least have a memorable, catchy chorus to remember.
This trend of barely audible or otherwise incomprehensible lyrics is a bit of a theme on this record, it seems. “Lifeboats” is where the EP really starts laying down the good shit, with this gentle, almost lullabic beat following after a distinct intro with this neat electronically imitated loon call. The beat is pretty tight itself, but it’s very faint. Even fainter, reverberated vocals come in courtesy of featured artist Oceanically, who you really have to listen to quite diligently to make out any words, rather incongruously coupled with the song’s relaxed atmosphere. The mild reverb helps improve what I felt like was a rather weak vocal performance. It’s passable, given the song’s mellowed out tone. In my opinion, this should have been our leading track, as having a hip hop intro might have given some listeners the false impression that it’s going to be a hip hop EP, but perhaps it would’ve stuck out too much elsewhere. I feel like that track sticks out in general and probably could’ve served better on a different, more up-tempo release.
“Life”, the final track on the record, is also the last of our featured vocalists’ contributions to this EP. Billy Dragon’s voice is the most audible out of the trifecta, and it helps that he has a funny accent that I’m unable to glean. I think he might be Indian, or something, I don’t fucking know. He also doesn’t really “sing”, but just says silly things in this deranged, ham-fisted voice, like, “Life—it’s in the blood,” “You are the image of God,” and my personal favorite, “You are the image of intelligent design.” Yeah… Not a huge fan of the philosophy preached in this track, but the ethereal instrumentals that are prevalent all over this entire record are definitely exemplified in this particular track and, really, the final four tracks, or the entire second half.
The second half of this EP is where the meat is. “Hug Me ‘Til You Drug Me” has one of NaGUST’s best instrumentals in a long, long time. As Moonspeak, she always straddled the line between combining a good beat and a catchy beat, and this is the closest she has come yet. The main melody of this track is very subdued and despondent, and it isn’t repeated ad nauseam to the point where it’s no longer catchy/fun to listen to anymore, like she had issues in the past with songs like “Visitor From the Red Planet”. An 8-bit bridge plays the song off, as the subdued melody couples with it beautifully. I still don’t feel like she really knows how to end a song properly or satisfactorily—again, with tracks like GIGIO sort of just cutting off unceremoniously. It’s very possible to end a song abruptly and still have it be a good ending, but it’s just so rarely done on any of NaGUST’s records.
“†Dagger” is an example of not only a song that ends properly—in this case, by gently tapering off after the song’s final climax—but also of one of the more well-crafted tracks on the EP in general. A perceptively complex melody that echoes rapidly across my ear buds—a real joy to listen to. For perhaps the first time, NaGUST has produced a track that has that “professional” air about it. There’s a hectic breakdown on this track, too—and there hasn’t been a breakdown this satisfying since “Solar Eclipse” from the Atmos EP. Indeed, tracks four through seven on this EP are exactly what I’ve been waiting to hear from NaGUST since Manifestation, and to finally hear her progress this much musically is highly gratifying.
That isn’t to say this record is without it’s duds, though. And they are rather large duds. I’ve taken a lot of shots at GIGIO, but I actually like the track. I just think it could’ve been produced a little better and placed in a more appropriate location in NaGUST’s library. No, what I really just didn’t care for from this EP are the tracks I’ve yet to mention, and those are tracks two and three: Nightshift and Alone In Company.
The obviously superior song is Nightshift, so I’ll start with that. To me, it sounds… I think I see what she was trying to do with this track. It’s another subdued, ethereal mix that would sound just fine when paired up with the other tracks, but… To me, it’s far too busy to be that “quiet, eerie” track that I think it’s trying to be. The muddy bass line dominates the track, as it undulates from high ends to low ends, very sluggishly, very groggily. The instrumentation is gross, the tempo of the song is much too fast, and the whole thing is very busy for what’s most likely supposed to be a low-key foil to Lifeboats, a much stronger track on the record. The sparse percussion on this track, as well as the muddy bass line, makes me think of the Dust Brothers’ work with the score of my favorite film, Fight Club. “Nightshift” is a track that sounds like it would fit on the soundtrack of a poor man’s rip-off of Fight Club. That just puts a nasty taste in my mouth, man.
“Alone In Company” is even worse. To give credit, it almost sounded like the song was actually going somewhere around the thirty-five second mark—what would be a very powerful low-key piano melody just sort of crashes and burns. As I was listening to this track, I imagined a lot of different and better ways you could have finished the melody—a kiss of death for your song. You don’t want your audience to start thinking of better versions of your own music when they are first listening to your record. But I can’t help it; this song just sounds incomplete. It sounds like a demo. I really don’t think NaGUST finished this track. It seems like something is missing. Why didn’t that piano melody go anywhere? It was sounding like it was gonna be something, but then it ended up being nothing. What otherwise may have been another gem ended up being a germ due to it sounding utterly half-assed.
Indeed, The Features EP is not at all without its follies. Though the second half of the album exceeded expectations, I was left underwhelmed by the first three songs, which was really testing my patience on my first couple listens. Misguided song placement, Billy Dragon’s corniness, and her mild coquetting with the humdrum half-bakedness of her past self here and there gave this album a slightly lower score than I wanted in my head, but I also have this cutting-edge new rating system that I’m sure will sound fair to everyone. Unlike the American school grading system NaGUST and I have deal with where a 5/10 signifies failure, a 5/10 in my case will indicate that I thought the record was “just okay”. So, in this case, factoring in all of what I liked about this record, I’m feeling a hard six to a light seven on this record. That means I liked it, but I’m not willing to just overlook some of the low points on the record. Overall, I feel like this was a very strong record for NaGUST, and definitely one that she needed to make to sort of prove herself as this matured musician. Either way, I look forward to hearing whatever else NaGUST has to offer with her fancy new handle ‘n’ shit.
Well, in this particular instance, yes. The Features EP is what I feel to be a great, fresh start in NaGUST’s composing “career”, so to speak. It’s easily one of the better recordings she has ever made, let alone one of her best EPs, and it’s quite refreshing to see a sort of clean-cut release with no silly titling gimmicks and no over-long, drawn out tracks for once. With this sort of upgrade, however, I feel it’s necessary to make an upgrade of my own in regard to my whole reviewing process—from now on, I’m all about the music, and just the music. I feel like in the past, I’d harp too much on the aesthetic and other minutiae of each release—with the titles and the track lengths and even the cover art. Paragraphs would be spent deriding these trivialities when I ought to have been focusing more on, if not entirely, the music itself. It’s a matter of courtesy and brevity. I write these reviews to constructively criticize my friend’s hard work, and as such, I’ll make a stronger effort to focus only on the tracks themselves, and how they sound when viewed individually and holistically. A throwaway comment here or there about a particular title that strikes me in particular might still take place if I see fit, but I’ll no longer waste anyone’s time with insubstantial nonsense like that by the paragraph.
We open up uniquely with “GIGIO”; an electronic hip hop beat inspired by the music found on the character select screen of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Dominated by its energetic and perhaps urgent rhythm, the vocals of featured rapper Amvis are almost drowned out, leaving me struggling to hear whatever it is he’s rapping about. He sounds great, though—he has a very strong yet simple flow and every one of his lines is delivered quite powerfully. I just kinda wish I knew what he was spitting, but perhaps the dominating 8-bit influenced beat is supposed to set the tone that this is meant to be a pure music-listening experience—nothing lyrically challenging. That would be consistent with NaGUST’s previous releases, but in general, I feel like the main driving factor of hip-hop music should be the lyricism. Maybe Amvis is drowned out because he’s not actually saying anything profound, which is part of the issue, in my opinion. The lack of a hook doesn’t help, especially considering that the whole purpose of the hook is to “hook” the audience in and get them to sing along, or at least have a memorable, catchy chorus to remember.
This trend of barely audible or otherwise incomprehensible lyrics is a bit of a theme on this record, it seems. “Lifeboats” is where the EP really starts laying down the good shit, with this gentle, almost lullabic beat following after a distinct intro with this neat electronically imitated loon call. The beat is pretty tight itself, but it’s very faint. Even fainter, reverberated vocals come in courtesy of featured artist Oceanically, who you really have to listen to quite diligently to make out any words, rather incongruously coupled with the song’s relaxed atmosphere. The mild reverb helps improve what I felt like was a rather weak vocal performance. It’s passable, given the song’s mellowed out tone. In my opinion, this should have been our leading track, as having a hip hop intro might have given some listeners the false impression that it’s going to be a hip hop EP, but perhaps it would’ve stuck out too much elsewhere. I feel like that track sticks out in general and probably could’ve served better on a different, more up-tempo release.
“Life”, the final track on the record, is also the last of our featured vocalists’ contributions to this EP. Billy Dragon’s voice is the most audible out of the trifecta, and it helps that he has a funny accent that I’m unable to glean. I think he might be Indian, or something, I don’t fucking know. He also doesn’t really “sing”, but just says silly things in this deranged, ham-fisted voice, like, “Life—it’s in the blood,” “You are the image of God,” and my personal favorite, “You are the image of intelligent design.” Yeah… Not a huge fan of the philosophy preached in this track, but the ethereal instrumentals that are prevalent all over this entire record are definitely exemplified in this particular track and, really, the final four tracks, or the entire second half.
The second half of this EP is where the meat is. “Hug Me ‘Til You Drug Me” has one of NaGUST’s best instrumentals in a long, long time. As Moonspeak, she always straddled the line between combining a good beat and a catchy beat, and this is the closest she has come yet. The main melody of this track is very subdued and despondent, and it isn’t repeated ad nauseam to the point where it’s no longer catchy/fun to listen to anymore, like she had issues in the past with songs like “Visitor From the Red Planet”. An 8-bit bridge plays the song off, as the subdued melody couples with it beautifully. I still don’t feel like she really knows how to end a song properly or satisfactorily—again, with tracks like GIGIO sort of just cutting off unceremoniously. It’s very possible to end a song abruptly and still have it be a good ending, but it’s just so rarely done on any of NaGUST’s records.
“†Dagger” is an example of not only a song that ends properly—in this case, by gently tapering off after the song’s final climax—but also of one of the more well-crafted tracks on the EP in general. A perceptively complex melody that echoes rapidly across my ear buds—a real joy to listen to. For perhaps the first time, NaGUST has produced a track that has that “professional” air about it. There’s a hectic breakdown on this track, too—and there hasn’t been a breakdown this satisfying since “Solar Eclipse” from the Atmos EP. Indeed, tracks four through seven on this EP are exactly what I’ve been waiting to hear from NaGUST since Manifestation, and to finally hear her progress this much musically is highly gratifying.
That isn’t to say this record is without it’s duds, though. And they are rather large duds. I’ve taken a lot of shots at GIGIO, but I actually like the track. I just think it could’ve been produced a little better and placed in a more appropriate location in NaGUST’s library. No, what I really just didn’t care for from this EP are the tracks I’ve yet to mention, and those are tracks two and three: Nightshift and Alone In Company.
The obviously superior song is Nightshift, so I’ll start with that. To me, it sounds… I think I see what she was trying to do with this track. It’s another subdued, ethereal mix that would sound just fine when paired up with the other tracks, but… To me, it’s far too busy to be that “quiet, eerie” track that I think it’s trying to be. The muddy bass line dominates the track, as it undulates from high ends to low ends, very sluggishly, very groggily. The instrumentation is gross, the tempo of the song is much too fast, and the whole thing is very busy for what’s most likely supposed to be a low-key foil to Lifeboats, a much stronger track on the record. The sparse percussion on this track, as well as the muddy bass line, makes me think of the Dust Brothers’ work with the score of my favorite film, Fight Club. “Nightshift” is a track that sounds like it would fit on the soundtrack of a poor man’s rip-off of Fight Club. That just puts a nasty taste in my mouth, man.
“Alone In Company” is even worse. To give credit, it almost sounded like the song was actually going somewhere around the thirty-five second mark—what would be a very powerful low-key piano melody just sort of crashes and burns. As I was listening to this track, I imagined a lot of different and better ways you could have finished the melody—a kiss of death for your song. You don’t want your audience to start thinking of better versions of your own music when they are first listening to your record. But I can’t help it; this song just sounds incomplete. It sounds like a demo. I really don’t think NaGUST finished this track. It seems like something is missing. Why didn’t that piano melody go anywhere? It was sounding like it was gonna be something, but then it ended up being nothing. What otherwise may have been another gem ended up being a germ due to it sounding utterly half-assed.
Indeed, The Features EP is not at all without its follies. Though the second half of the album exceeded expectations, I was left underwhelmed by the first three songs, which was really testing my patience on my first couple listens. Misguided song placement, Billy Dragon’s corniness, and her mild coquetting with the humdrum half-bakedness of her past self here and there gave this album a slightly lower score than I wanted in my head, but I also have this cutting-edge new rating system that I’m sure will sound fair to everyone. Unlike the American school grading system NaGUST and I have deal with where a 5/10 signifies failure, a 5/10 in my case will indicate that I thought the record was “just okay”. So, in this case, factoring in all of what I liked about this record, I’m feeling a hard six to a light seven on this record. That means I liked it, but I’m not willing to just overlook some of the low points on the record. Overall, I feel like this was a very strong record for NaGUST, and definitely one that she needed to make to sort of prove herself as this matured musician. Either way, I look forward to hearing whatever else NaGUST has to offer with her fancy new handle ‘n’ shit.
7/10
(I totally didn’t steal this rating system from TheNeedleDrop)
GEMS:
- Lifeboats (ft Oceanically)
- Hug Me ‘Til You Drug Me
- †Dagger
- Hug Me ‘Til You Drug Me
- †Dagger
GERMS:
- Nightshift
- Alone In Company
- Alone In Company
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